Friday, 27 January 2012

one small amazing fact...

http://www.pdphoto.org

What a little beauty, huh? Yep I'm still stuck on snails (see the brief book blog post on Intimacy of a few days ago).

And from that gorgeous book The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating here is a small and rather lovely fact: a snail has a heart, one lung – and a brain that, depending on species, has between 5,000 and 100,000 giant neurons. What's more, it seems that snails have been observed helping other weaker members of their genus to find food sources.

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I'm passionate about many things, but I'm increasingly realising that one way or another they're all about relationship: our interconnectedness, and finding ways to make conscious and wise our relationship to self and other (in which I include all species and the planet). Something to do with being earthstuff and starstuff both, all of us, and learning how to cherish. See my 2 websites, above.And 'qualia'? Well, loosely, the quality of individual subjective conscious experience; eg the perception of a colour, or experience of a journey; our experience of person-ness. (G defines it neatly: 'Qualia are what save us from being machines.') Sits nicely, in my imagination, with quanta. Quanta & qualia. Like bookends. Or pillars of the temple. Or cats – heaven forbid...

Looking for Icarus

the reprint of my first collection

The Burning Ground

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River Suite: limited edition of 300 copies, some still available via Paypal, below

Roselle's long poem sequence with photos by Vikky Minette. You can hear a recording of Roselle reading the poem on SoundCloud by clicking the image.

All the Missing Names of Love (2012; poetry)

Bardo

2011; prose-poem & poems

Imago

2011; timeslip novel

Writing the Bright Moment – inspiration & guidance for writers

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I'm very happy for you to quote from these posts, but please credit me and provide a link to this site. All the text and images on this blog are copyright by myself or the credited poet/author unless it's something like an environmental charity circular. You'll need written permission from me to use whole articles, or my images. Thanks for your attention to this.

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.I do know how to pay attention, how to fall downinto the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,which is what I have been doing all day.Tell me, what else should I have done?Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?Tell me, what is it you plan to dowith your wild and precious life?

Mary Oliver

The entire cosmos is a cooperative. The sun, the moon, and the stars live together as a cooperative. The same is true for humans and animals, trees, and the Earth. When we realize that the world is a mutual, interdependent, cooperative enterprise – then we can build a noble environment. If our lives are not based on this truth, then we shall perish.